Prayer beads

By no means would I call myself a religious person, though when I was younger I did attend church. The teachings at mass never truly stuck with me and my attention span was exactly what you’d expect out of a bored kid. Regardless of my lackadaisical spiritual agenda at that age, I can recall the structures of St. Thomas More quite well (with some additional help from my mom of course). St. Thomas More is a Catholic church located off of East Avenue and has the stereotypical exterior of a…

Last year, my family had a shaman ceremony to protect our family. A shaman ceremony is when a shaman goes into the spiritual world to talk to the bad spirits to stop making us sick. We called a shaman to come in to do a ceremony for us. We killed two pigs for the ceremony and it was mainly to protect my family from the spiritual world. Before the ceremony, we would call our relatives, families, and friends to come and help. The main idea of the ceremony was to offer money to all the bad spirits…

The church I attend, Our Lady of Fatima, holds an Al-Anon meeting every Monday night at eight o’clock. There were about fifteen people, all different backgrounds and ages ranged between mid-thirties to mid- eighties. The meeting lasted about an hour and a half. The meeting was an open meeting, it was structured and organized. Before the meeting started an announcement was made. After the meeting anyone who wanted to join was welcomed, for they were going to get a bit to eat. When the meeting…

RARELY has obedience laid upon me so difficult a task as this of writing about prayer; for one reason, because I do not feel that God has given me either the power or the desire for it, besides which, during the last three months I have suffered from noises and a great weakness in my head that have made it painful for me to write even on necessary business. However, as I know the power obedience has of making things easy which seem impossible, my will submits with a good grace, although nature…

tell you about something that happened to me when I was younger. I want to tell you about the day I met Jesus.” Blank stares emerged from the congregation as heads turned down to smartphones to silently pass the time as they awaited the commencement prayer so they could rush over to the nearest restaurant to beat the lunch crowd. After all, Simmons’ congregation…

““What do you do when a person…?” Dot, dot, dot. As Small Groups Pastor, what’s about to follow is a question about handling a certain type of personality during a small group meeting” (Mason, n.d, para. 1). This question could just as easily have been uttered to an HR manager within in a business setting. Small group interactions can be complex at times, but can yield great personal growth and satisfaction. Therefore, it is imperative that as individuals we arm ourselves with knowledge to…

In the article Teaching about religion in public schools can be risky, but it’s worth it by Linda K. Wertheimer states that, “Is it appropriate to have students write out the Lord’s Prayer, the Muslim statement of faith, or the Sh’ma, a key prayer in Judaism that affirms Jewish belief in one God?” This helped many students of all different religions find out how not to be scared of all the different religions in the world , and how to respect them. There are so…

How much do you appreciate your religion, or even your own beliefs? Is there anything pertaining to prayer or anything religious at school? There has been a decrease of prayer or anything religious at school mostly because of the U.S. Supreme Court passing a law that outlawed prayer in schools in the year 1962. Prayer is still allowed, but it cannot be lead by adults in a classroom or somewhere very specific like that. The U.S. Supreme Court had passed off a law in June 25, 1962 that had some…

The border between religious worship and mental disorder seems to be quite thin in the Book of Margery Kempe. Much of the time she is sobbing uncontrollably about something she saw or did that she didn’t think fit her perspective of piety. It is not that far out to say that Margery Kempe is obsessed with her piety, to the point that it sometimes becomes a dangerous like when she was accused of being a Lollard. Moreover, her piety seems to follow a distinct cycle of seeing a certain thing that…

Should Religion be Required in Public Schools? For at least 20 years, religion in schools has been the center of every debate. Whether praying during a graduation ceremony or just simply praying to god for help on a test. The First Amendment made to separate the activities of church and state; religious or nonreligious. Some people believe that if schools were to teach students how to understand and respect people with other religious beliefs , religious bias crimes would disappear little…